Jock Busuttil's Blog: I Manage Products, page 18

As head of product, should I be a player-manager, or hire and delegate?

Here’s a question I was asked recently:

Hi Jock,

I’ve recently joined a new company as their first head of product. Historically the company hasn’t been ‘product-minded’.

There’s plenty that needs doing with the products. I could focus on the hiring process, but the only product manager on my team has their hands full, so I can’t delegate any more to them. I could get stuck in with the products myself as a player-manager, but this means I won’t have time to hire.

What’s the right ba...

PRODUCTHEAD: Empathy with the engineering team

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADproduct daylighttl;dr

Create space for your engineering team, understand the ebbs and flows of work, and help them to avoid burn-out

Work to understand the technical complexities facing the engineering team

Engineers typically focus on a small number of large tasks

Product and engineering overlap: clarify who does what

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PRODUCTHEAD: Products with a fatal flaw ☠️

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADpunchdrunk lovesick prodalongtl;dr

Encourage continual scrutiny of your product’s central flaws — talk openly about the elephants in the room

Cognitive biases lead us away from rational thought and objective truth

Research and evidence help us to neutralise biases

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every PRODUCTHEAD edition...

PRODUCTHEAD: Understanding the user’s perspective

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADstreet spirit (product out)tl;dr

A common language about research is vital for building a team’s capability

Customers are only reliable sources about their own experiences

The way we think about product is determined by the language we use

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every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to ref...

PRODUCTHEAD: Do the hard work to make it simple

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADi am a product childtl;dr

Focus helps to reduce cognitive load without losing sight of the underlying complexity — it is different to simplifying

The challenge of simplifying a complex legal process was to find simpler language that didn’t sacrifice essential points of law

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every PRODUCTHEAD e...

Thank you for 10 years of support

Just a quick post to say that Product People Limited is 10 years old today. And I’m proud of it :-)

I started freelancing as a head of product back when it was barely a thing. In fact, I gave myself 6 months to see if I could make it work. Within a month or so SwiftServe (now part of Conversant) became Product People’s first client, and I’ve not looked back since.

Over the years I’ve been involved with an ambitious charitable project in Rwanda with the NIKE Foundation, shown up briefly in the back...

PRODUCTHEAD: Setting up a product support team

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADpermanent producttl;dr

Work continues after the project ends — plan for the ongoing support of your product

A support team deals with user queries, incidents and ongoing improvement of the product

Great user support is an expectation, not a nice-to-have

Feedback from user support can identify areas of product improvement

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PRODUCTHEAD: Playing Whack-a-mole with symptoms

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADhow can you product sure?tl;dr

Treating symptoms may provide short-term relief but does not alter the status quo

Root cause analysis helps us to systematically prevent future issues or to repeat successes

Impact maps help to connect what we choose to build and why we choose to build it

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eve...

Billion-dollar platforms — how they did it

I was asked recently whether platforms will conquer the world. My view? They already have. In this article I share how they’ve done it, and how you can successfully bring your own platform to market.

Ubiquitous platforms

Almost every aspect of our lives relies on some kind of software platform, whether it’s the apps on our smartphone, the online marketplaces we buy from, the payments we make, the comments we post on social media, or the television shows and movies we stream. Even the c...

PRODUCTHEAD: Communication toolkit recap

PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.

Subscribe to PRODUCTHEADmillion dollar producttl;dr

In case you missed it: recap of the communication toolkit

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every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

hello

Just a quick one for you this week as I’m also working on a longer form article for I Manage Products.

In the article I’ll be looking ...